Category Archives: reading

Today’s post is a guest post from mystery writer Judy Alter. Take it away, Judy!

Room with a view

Some years ago my oldest daughter, Megan, called from Austin one Sunday morning. “I’ve remodeled your house,” she announced. My reply was, “Thank you very much, but I like my house the way it is.” Mine is a 1922 red brick with the standard layout: living room, dining room, and kitchen march down the right side of the house, with three bedrooms on the left. There are a few variations—a half bath in the front bedroom, an extra short hallway off the dining room to the bathroom between kitchen and third bedroom. Previous owners had remodeled, adding a long room across the back (now a playroom and the bedroom for my local grandson) and turning the kitchen into galley space. It still has the charm of an old house, including battered and worn wood floors.

But as I listened, what she said made sense. My office then was in the third bedroom, a fairly dark space with nothing to look at but the pictures on the wall opposite my desk. The front bedroom opened directly off the living room through an off-center standard door. Megan’s idea? Put French doors in the front bedroom and make it into my office. Eventually that turned out to be a multi-faceted remodeling project including painting several rooms, re-routing air conditioning ducts, replacing the pull-down staircase and other things that needed to be done.

These days I live at my desk. Eating alone? I eat in front of the computer, sometimes with an eye on the TV. I work here, and when I quit for the evening to relax with a good book, I read at my desk (never was comfortable reading in bed). From my desk I can look out into the living room and out the windows of the dining room to check on what lights the neighbors have at night. (They tell me they can also check on how late at night I work at my desk.) The room itself has four windows on two walls, so it is usually sunny and bright, depending on the day. At certain times of the year, I have to close the shutters because the sun plays games on my computer screen.

The bookshelves that line one wall hold only a portion of my books, though we added an extra section to them a few years ago. I never can find the specific book I want and go from room to room studying the shelves. Someday I plan to organize. But don’t hold your breath!

Some days, when I am busy running errands or doing other things away from the house, I feel the pull of this office space. I want to be here, checking email, eating a quiet lunch, picking away at something I want to write.

Have I written the great American novel in this space? Not hardly, but my writing is doing better in the last couple of years. Beyond that, the office makes me happy—and I think that’s most important.

TeacherWriter comments:

That’s such a wonderful way to open up a writing space. There’s something about French doors that I love, and I’ve never been fortunate enough to have them in my own house. Lucky you!

About Judy Alter

Judy Alter, author of the Kelly O’Connell Mysteries, has written fiction and nonfiction for adults and young readers, including many books about women of the American West, such as Mattie, Libbie, and Sundance, Butch and Me, soon available as e-books. She retired as director of TCU Press and has several awards to her credit, including the Owen Wister Lifetime Achievement Award from Western Writers of America. The single parent of four and grandmother of seven, she lives in Fort Worth, Texas with her Bordoodle puppy and aging Aussie. Find her at the Judy Alter author website, and follow her two blogs, Judy’s Stew and Potluck with Judy.

Skeleton in a Dead Space

Kelly O’Connell never thought real estate was a dangerous profession. But while updating early-twentieth-century Craftsman houses in an older neighborhood in Fort Worth, Texas, she stumbles over a skeleton and begins unraveling an old murder. The police call it a cold case, but Kelly knows she must solve the murder if she is to finish the house and sell it. She and her two young daughters quickly become the target of threats and vandalism, and someone is telling her ex-husband in California what’s going on. Tim Spencer arrives to protect his daughters by taking them to California with him but is soon found shot to death. Then a new client barges into Kelly’s life, and she finds herself facing a gun, a deadly killer, and the solution to the mystery of the skeleton and Tim’s death.

No Neighborhood for Old Women

When a serial killer begins targeting older women in Fort Worth’s Fairmount neighborhood, realtor/renovator Kelly O’Connell investigates, in spite of the pleas of her companion, policeman Mike Shandy, and her assistant, the colorful Keisha, that she stay out of it. Kelly knows a serial killer will hurt business, and she worries about the frightened old women in the neighborhood. And when Claire Guthrie, a friend and former client, shows up at Kelly’s front door announcing that she’s just shot her husband in the butt, Kelly becomes her champion. Kelly knows about bad marriages and bad husbands from her own experience. Then Kelly’s mom, the needy Cynthia O’Connell, decides to move to Fort Worth to be near her grandchildren. Kelly, a harried, hassled, and loving single mom of two young girls, unwittingly puts her children, her mom, and herself in danger and almost derails her love life.